Cutting Phone Rates
The Cabinet has approved a plan to reduce international phone rates by up to 40%. That's all good, but what about local rates? I can call Lebanon, from the US, for anything between 5 - 10 cents/minute. That's cheaper than using a cellphone in Lebanon to call a cellphone ... in Lebanon. Hmmm.
posted by Lazarus, 8:08 AM
6 Comments:
Monopolies are bad and governmental monopolies are worst. Would the local charges justify a call back service say from Cyprus?
BTW, how else would you justify EDLs' exorbitant rates a totally unreliable service and a huge annual deficit?
By
Anonymous, at 11:23 AM
Monopolies are bad and rates in Lebanon are amongst the highest in the world but...
The government is about to privatize the cellular network, and the fixed lines might follow.
DSL is supposedly being introduced, and it will take 5 minutes to install Skype.
I will have to check but I was under the impression that the laws in Lebanon allow the creation of private electricity cies. There is a successful one in Zahleh for eg.
We have laws on the books in Lebanon to defeat state monopolies, protect the environment, form political parties... The problem is that it is always very tedious to take advantage of them.
Moreover, the easiest way for the gov. to make money is to tax phones and oil.
By
Ms Levantine, at 12:59 PM
Ms Lev
(1) The Lebanese govt has been discussing the privatization of the cellular network for 5-6 years!!!! BTW, a cellular network for less than 1 million subscribers is not nearly as valuable as some lebanese think especially once the huge capital investments that are called for in order to modernize the current network.
(2)Who is going to be the monopolist on the DSL? A government official or one of his kin?
(3) What is the proportion of the Lebanese that can use Skype? A better question will be how many people have even heard of Skype?
(4) It is strange that no private electric generating companies have been created if it is true that the law allows them to operate.
(5) To have laws on the books is completely different from allowing such laws to be enforced. I would much hope that it is corruption and authoritarianism that prevents laws from being enforced rather than tedium :-)
(6) Taxing phones and oil might be the "easiest way for government" to raise revenue but we all know that the easiest way is often the most inefficient and the least effective way.
By
Anonymous, at 1:42 PM
Ghassan,
I am not arguing that Lebanon is a well managed country. In fact it is a mess and I think we all agree.
My point is that it is better to light a candle than to curse the darkeness. For every problem there is a solution.
I will argue that not all public officals are hopelessly corrupt, and that if you fight, the laws are applied in the end, whether is to stop the trees at the Saudi embassy from being cut or closing illegal quarries.
It is not easy, but it is feasible. And I am speaking about my own experience. The phones privatization are a mess, how about having a watchdog group of economists like yourself to monitor the process? DSL will end up in the wrong hands, how about the ISPs looking into it...
If we want to reclaim our country at long last we will have to individually fight for the establishment of a civil society. And as you are fond of saying, there is no such thing as a free lunch.
By
Ms Levantine, at 2:36 PM
"DSL is supposedly being introduced, and it will take 5 minutes to install Skype"
with only 3 hubs of 45 meg / each for whole lebanon
the dsl would be retrained for the most of us
By
Anonymous, at 12:56 AM
argh i mean should be restrained for most of us.
besides that the services they were talking about can only be launched in a 3km radius from the telephone centrals ....
many lies about it
By
Anonymous, at 12:57 AM
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